So let's dig something out
Like a lot of links and curiosities I've been collecting inside a picnic basket (actually just a google doc)
Hey fellas, how is it going?
Today’s newsletter has no theme. But I hope you’ll be able to find something interesting to keep you distracted from the fact that a war just started.
My name is Federico and welcome to Representations of Architecture #34.
Insights
This drawing by Kazuo Shinohara is pretty interesting because it’s the fruit of years of reduction of the signs by japanese architects. Especially those listed under the flag of the Shinohara School1 have progressively embraced a minimalism that is best represented by Toyo Ito’s drawing for his House at Nakano (White U, 1976). Shinohara started all around early 70s, depicting architecture characterized by the absence of thickness; Toyo Ito reprises it some years later; Shinohara re-reprises it reducing architecture to a series of non-hierarchical lines.
If Shinohara’s drawing was the result of a thinning of the architecture features to a quasi-paper quality, Takeyama’s is instead all about the concept of surface. His building Niban-kan in Kabuki-cho (Shinjuku)2 is a precursor of Post-modern (it dates back to 1968) and it hosted game rooms and adult clubs. The curious volume of the building didn’t give any clues on what was its function, even more so the moment the surface of the building hosted Op-Art motifs. Takeyama thought the surface as a membrane able to absorb the everchanging enviroment of the chaotic Kabuki-cho. The first configuration (above) was designed by Kiyoshi Awazu, famous graphic designer behind the layout of the metabolist manifesto Metabolism 1960 (and later The Work of Kisho Kurokawa). After 10 years the skin of Niban-kan was changed (enter instagram and swipe the image above) and Takeyama once again represents it as the planar unfolding of the whole surface.
Very beautiful links
And now: A dump of links.
Wanna see a japanese building being constructed really (really) slowly?
Wanna see a japanese building being demolished really (really) slowly?
A webiste where you can listen great non-mainstream music from all countries and decades.
I wrote a paper on the famous Banksy’s Di-Faced Tenner. I totally forgot to put it inside the newsletter dedicated to money.
A building where is difficult to live in. Obviously in Japan.
Duck Architecture (or the less glamorous Novelty Architecture)
A weird disturbing french movie based on the story of Marquis de Sade.
Draw your story perfectly controlling the timeline thanks to this notebook.
Sweet IG pages
Just a relaxing good ol’ Nat Geo.
Misc
Are you watching Euphoria? I frankly hope so because season 2 is absolutely incredible (a lot better of season 1). Euphoria is an HBO (= Quality) modern teen drama with a lot of talented actors inside, compelling story and (usually) good music. In last week’s episode a classic of teen series is subverted: the school musical. It becomes the occasion to rebuild the missing pieces of a story giving so much depth to the characters + the scenography is just stunning. Down here a short clip of a rotating scene:
Don’t know if you followed the weird posting Ye (formerly Kanye West) did on his instagram. Everything was written in Caps lock and some posts were frankly hilarious. In the end what happened is that Ye launched his new album Donda 2 and it is possible to listen it only on his new platform/device: Stem (this kind of weird alien stone down here). It’s being sold at 200 USD and you can have a look at it here. New iPod or new Zune (or similar)?
I can easily say that Thee Oh Sees are one of my favorite bands. I can literally listen to their noisy weird garage rock all day. Two things that make me love them:
They constantly change their name: OCS, The Ohsees, The Oh Sees, Oh Sees, Osees. Same same.
Their album artworks are just insane.
The image above (cover of Mutilator Defeated at Last, 2015) has been drawn by Tetsunori Tawaraya3, japanese psichedelic illustrator that I deeply love.
One of their most accessible songs:
Newsletter is over. I’m out.
See you next week with a fresh new takeover.
CIAO,
Federico
Thomas Daniell in his An Anatomy of Influence (2018) gives a perfect summary on what was (and it is today) the Shinohara School. Highly recommended book if you wanna have first-hand news on what is really Japanese Architecture.
Pretty famous also outside Japan thanks to the cover of Jencks’ The Language of Post Modern Architecture (1977).
Tawaraya, as Bartosz Zaskorski (seen in a previous newsletter), publishes his comics with the italian Hollow Press, check it out.